Communicable
by Abreaction
Summary: Pivotal information concerning the health of one’s homosexual life partner is never good news when it is disclosed over a McDonald’s table. Super-belated birthday fic for Novelist Pup.


**A/N:** The following story is a birthday fic to the epic awesome that is otherwise known as:** Novelist Pup.**

Um, Mr. Epic-Awesome-Half/Step-Hubby-Ten Cents-Pup, can you find it in your big heart to forgive me for taking my good(?) ol' time with this crappy fic? I'm _so sorry_ that it took me such an epically long time to complete--what have I been doing for these past few weeks!? Um. Anyways, as our amazingly awesome wife, Divva, already told you (I think), our co-fic will be finished sometime in the next century, so have no fear! :D

I'm sorry that this sucks. Actually, I've been very, _very_ ill for the past few days; I've been bedridden for two days, now. I actually missed my history final because I was too sick to go to school. I was supposed to be sleeping instead of being on the computer, but I secretly snuck on so I could finish this story quickly (as per your request, because I know you wanted to read this hunk-o'-junk very badly for some reason). I all but forced myself to write it, so it's super _B_ to the _A_ to the _D_. Initially, I was going to write some Poker Pair for ye, but I had already started this fic, it was about being sick (right up my alley!), and... so, yeah. If you utterly despise _Communicrap_ like I do, I'll be happy to scrap this weirdo and write something else for you! Or perhaps another over-the-phone, off-key serenade is what you desire? (This fic is un-"beta'd", anyway. I didn't have enough time to look it over, and this is my one chance to put it out before next week rolls around.) Oh, and I'm _not racist_. Like, at all. It's just that... I don't know. You'll see what I mean if you read up to it, dudes.

HAPPY SUPER-DUPER BELATED SEVENTEENTH, MR. PUP! :D Just think, one more year and you can be a certified pedophile! Or, wait, do you need to be twenty-one for that?

Ugh, sorry that I'm a slow-poke when it comes to writing fics. D:

**Disclaimer:** Thankfully, D. Gray-man ain't mine, because its plot would probably be something straight out of a generic shoujo anime... hey! Just like the hideous story below! :D

* * *

Mondays were, perhaps, Kanda's least favorite day of the entire week. It wasn't as if he were one for favoritism, no, but there was just something about Mondays that caused his blood to turn to acid, dissolve his veins, and cause his entire body to die a horrible and painful death until he could rip aforementioned day off of the 2009 Dog Calendar that Allen had purchased specifically to piss him off, and live in harmony until the next Monday rolled around.

Today, of course, was a Monday. And, just like every predeceasing Monday, Kanda was wasting his fifteen-minute lunch break at an artery-clogging McDonald's with two of his least favorite people. Naturally, everyone whose name didn't start with an "A" and end with an "llen" ranked high on the choleric man's hatred list, but, today, Lavi was being particularly irritating. Kanda already had puncture his napkin with Lenalee's plastic knife five times pretending it was the flamboyant redhead's lungs.

"Kan, why are you using my knife to shank the napkin?" the Chinese girl laughed nervously, indicating that she would like nothing better than to get out of a two mile radius of the man.

Flicking stray black bangs out of his eyes, Kanda glared at her. That nickname was, perhaps, the poorest excuse for a surrogate that his ears ever had the misfortune of hearing. It was a damn good thing that he had decided to wear his hair down, that day. Maybe it would muffle the sound of that God-awful pet name as well as Lavi's aneurysm-inducing voice.

"Yu's just testy because Al didn't call him last night," Lavi grinned, stabbing his fork in the direction of the harassed martial artist.

As much as it killed a part of the Japanese man inside to admit it, Lavi had hit the jackpot.

Every Sunday, at approximately 7:00 PM, Kanda's phone would go off, blaring its special ringtone that only played when the Sprout called. It was routine for him to stare at said cell phone, nudging it as if answering the buzzing thing would be a sin against God enough to freeze him neck-deep in the ice of the ninth circle. Contrary to his supposed reluctance, Kanda secretly looked forward to the first day of the week, because then he could have an excuse to waste his minutes by listening to his boyfriend ramble about his potted plants, his snobby professors, and his latest recipes (throwing in the usual "shut the fuck up" or a "I hope you get stuck inside a pencil sharpener" here and there when he found it necessary), without needing an excuse to hide behind.

Sundays were the cream of the crop as well as the teacher's pet, always placing an apple at his desk; Mondays were the Goddamn epitome of pure evil, launching spitballs at the Kanda, running their mud-caked nails down the blackboard, and tugging at his ridiculously long ponytail.

"Well, at least we know why he didn't call," Lenalee shrugged, her fingertip gliding around the rim of her smoothie cup. "I mean, it's not like it's Allen's fault."

What were those two blathering on about? It was one-hundred-percent the freaking Beansprout's fault that he was too lazy to recall their Sunday night pattern, thus failing to press down the TWO button on the cell phone that Kanda had wasted his money purchasing for him, and speed-dialing his lover.

"Poor kid," The redhead grimaced, eyeing his female friend's pink beverage. Or, was it her chest? She was criminally well endowed, even Kanda, who had discovered that he was a fag for Allen at the ripe age of sixteen, could admit that.

"What the Hell are you two talking about?" The vaguely patient man grumbled, before turning his attention back to his lunch.

His blithe attitude become denser than one and sinking while a more dire mood became buoyant and arose to the surface, Lavi gaped at his best friend since those flawless years of toddlerdom; where Pampers and Dixie cups with Superman printed on the cylinder reigned, and fights over who ate the last cherry popsicle were a daily affair.

"Did you hear?"

A small grunt escaping his lips, Kanda looked up from his lunch—a healthy soba and sauce medley—to where the voice originated. On most occasions, the antisocial, fastidious, irritable, bastard, belligerent (Allen literally had a two-page long list in his possession of all of the nasty adjectives he could classify his boyfriend as) Kanda Yu would never _dare_ to mar his perfect noodles with a condiment, but the Beansprout had made the sauce especially for him—or so he had told him a week ago over the phone in-between coughs—so the Japanese man had no choice but to consume it. Not to mention that the last time he had thrown out something that Allen had whipped up for him, the Beansprout had refused to kiss him for a week. Damn manipulative brat.

"_Wot_?" He asked in-between chews, his speech obstructed by the lunch churning around inside his oral cavity.

"You're kidding! Are you telling me you don't know?" Lenalee gasped, automatically slapping a hand against Kanda's back, causing the noodles to slide down his windpipe.

"Aww, Yu! How can you not know?" The speculated-to-be-bisexual man feigned disappointment, pushing stray vermillion bangs behind his pale ear. If Kanda were capable of responding, he would have either strangled him or told him to go play freeze dance on a highway, though option A seemed the most plausible. Telling the eccentric redhead the rough equivalent by making quick use of his middle finger would have to suffice.

Lavi and Lenalee were either oblivious to the fact that Kanda was performing the Heimlich maneuver on himself, or they were both the next Bonnie and Clyde couple that was planning on robbing him of his valuables after he choked and died on his noodles.

Kanda could just picture it: A grainy image of his high school picture (the only one in which he was smiling) in the Obituary, a caption under it reading, "Local twenty-two-year-old martial artist dies after choking on a lunch of soba. He was found slumped over local McDonald's table with his ID, VISA, and license missing from his wallet."

Why the hell had he ever agreed to spend his lunch breaks with those two morons?

"Oh, Lav, you mean about Allen, right?"

As soon as the last syllable rolled off of Lenalee's tongue, everything else was forgotten. Instantly, the soba that had been asphyxiating Kanda was ejected from his throat, landing in Lavi's Caesar salad. Despite the fact that the thing he loved almost as much as his boyfriend had nearly killed him, Kanda was alert; cracking his knuckles while yanking out a notepad to write a faux-suicide letter for the sorry son-of-a-bitch who dared to touch _his_ Beansprout.

"Whew! Yu's out to kill!" The jovial redhead taunted, throwing his ruined McDonald's salad into the proper receptacle. He had been planning on tossing it regardless; Yu had probably poisoned it, anyway. He could distinctly recall an instance wherein Kanda had mixed an emetic in with his hamburger after he had dared to call Allen "babe" in the man's presence. Jesus, why had the poor kid chosen such a possessive mate for copulation? It was a damn good thing the two couldn't reproduce—for an offspring of their Punnett Square would be quite a sight. As well as a mouth.

"Who the _fuck_ messed with the Sprout?" The androgynous man snarled, pulling his excessively long, sable hair back into his usual ponytail. He wouldn't want to get blood on it—what would Allen run his hands through when they kissed if Kanda had to lop it all off lest it become the smoking gun?

"Who let loose the profanity canon?" Lavi joked, laughing at his own corny joke. Despite the fact that it was only thirty minutes past noon and ten past solar noon, the trio could swear that they literally heard crickets chirp.

"Who hurt him?" Kanda queried once more, venom literally (as well as metaphorically) dripping from his words. He would _not_ ask again. The angry hermaphrodite may have been a few tacos short of the fiesta platter, but he was sharp enough to recognize when his best friend was dancing over answering. If Lavi refused to cough up a name, address, and motive in the next five seconds, he would be spending the rest of eternity with his limbs strewn across various landfills.

"Jeez, Louise, Yu! Calm down, calm down," Lavi sighed, rubbing his temples in faux-exasperation. "You can't beat up the guy who messed around with him, anyway. Put some ice on it."

"It was that ass-hat professor from the damn Sprout's college, wasn't it? The one with that Goddamn mole under his eye and who looks as if he stuck in ass in the tanning booth for too long?" Kanda continued, blatantly throwing Lavi's response off of a cliff into a troubled ravine, as the image of the UV-infected man infiltrated his thoughts. "The Goddamn fucking professor who's always hitting on him? What's his name—Mac? Lick? _Dick?_"

Oh, that professor had it coming. Kanda wouldn't suppress anything for that man's sake. No one touched a finger on his boyfriend's head unless they were suicidal. Well, everyone save for him, of course.

"Wait, Kanda, let Lavi fini—"

"The fucker who's always sending flowers, airplane tickets to California, and chocolates in the mail? What did _the fuck_ he do to him? I'll skin him alive. I fucking look forward to our five-hour phone talks on Sundays, that bastard."

"Look, Yu, shut the hell up for a sec and let me fini—"

"Does suicide by slitting his wrists in a tub sound appropriate?"

"Yu, Goddamn—shut up!"

Shaking her head in vexation, Lenalee placed a comforting hand atop Kanda's nonsensical bicep. "Kan," She started slowly, speaking in a manner that would one refer to a dog with, rather than to an illogically dimwitted adult. "You can sue that man for sexual harassment, yes, but you cannot kill the thing that is affecting Allen."

Before Kanda could interject with another brainless-yet-surprisingly-creative threat, the girl continued.

"He's _sick."_

Realization hit Kanda like a piano to a cartoon character's head.

"Oh," He mumbled, attempting to mask his embarrassment by running a hand through his exorbitant hair once more.

"All brawn, no brains," Lavi grumbled, green eyes flickering towards his watch to calculate how much time he had before his break ended. "Sheesh, did you donate your brain to science before your time?"

"With these chopsticks," Kanda growled, lifting up aforementioned eating utensil for emphasis. "I'll _kill_ you."

Although curious as to how Kanda would pull off ending the life of a fellow human being with two wooden sticks, something told Lavi that he didn't want to find out.

After he had successfully melted the redhead into a puddle with the consistency of oatmeal with an excess of milk mixed into it, Kanda turned to the girl beside him. "Why the fuck didn't he tell me that he was sick, that idiot?"

Glossy bangs falling into her mauve eyes, Lenalee shrugged, a small, devious smirk adorning her cute features. "Maybe those plane tickets Allen gets in the mail aren't just for show, Kan," With that off her chest, she returned to sucking on her McFlurry.

Snorting, Kanda rapidly took Windex to the smudged prospect of Allen cheating on him. The Sprout knew better than to press his lips against another's; Kanda had already made it crystal-clear to Allen that, if he ever caught/suspected him of committing adultery, he would murder and rape him in such a clever way, that not only would it do Jack-the-Ripper proud, but it would be worth a lifetime in prison or the electric chair. _Beyond_ worth it.

But, even so…

Standing up so abruptly that it made Lavi shiver in fear that his threat of murdering him with chopsticks would come to fruition, Kanda threw his remaining soba in the garbage, heading for his red, bloodthirsty-looking Mercedes-Benz convertible.

"You still have a good five minutes left! Going back to work so soon, Yu?" Lavi chirped, recovering from his initial horror of being murdered with Kanda's native silverware. "Or you want to take the car for a spin?"

"Neither," the martial artist replied swiftly, without his best friend's words even vaguely registering in his mind. His thoughts were focused only one objective: _Allen._

"Then, where are you going?"

Standing in front of his car, squinting in the horribly luminous sunlight, Kanda finally gave his first honest response of the day. "I'm going to see Beansprout, dumbass."

And, with that, he placed the black sunglasses that his foster-brother, Daisya, had purchased from his over his eyes, and drove off into the sunset. Though it was only slightly past noon.

Through his brilliant thoughts of using his glasses to obscure his identity, scare the Beansprout into thinking he was being robbed/kidnapped/raped (any option would work), and then potentially frightening the disease out of Allen's body like the hiccups, Kanda didn't hear Lenalee's warnings about visiting his _highly ill_ boyfriend. Her vital words rolled into the exhaust pipe, clouded the air, and went into the sky to tear bits and pieces off of the defenseless Ozone layer.

However, just as those pollutants would come back to get the people who let them loose in the form of violet light getting through the murdered Ozone, Lenalee's warnings would come back to haunt Kanda.

He really needed to learn to listen to others.

--

_sprout, its me. im coming over. dnt do anything stupid b4 I get there._

Kanda attempted to text-message his beloved Beansprout while driving—despite all of Allen's warnings of "don't text and drive" when they would go for a ride around the neighborhood, while the elder lover would attempt to text-message colorful insults such as "fck u" to the neighborhood brats (of which he literally spent hours on end finding the numbers of in the Yellow Pages).

When he did not receive a reply criticizing his lack of grammar in around ten seconds, he came to terms with just _how sick_ Allen was.

There were only two reasons as to why his lover would not respond to a text message. Either: a) he was planning on throwing Kanda a surprise party to negate the disastrous twenty-first surprise birthday party (which the twins from across the street who liked to refer to themselves in the third person crashed) or b) he was terminally ill, in a vegetative state, and on his death bed.

However not paranoid Kanda claimed to be, no rules applied when it came down to the well being of the person he loved more than anything. And, unfortunately, option B seemed the most plausible in their current situation.

Goddamn.

Accelerating the speed of his car as soon as the familiar sign of "Dialanava Drive" came into view, something in the darkened recesses of Kanda's dust-ridden conscience told him that it was illegal to be driving at seventy-five miles per hour in a neighborhood. If anyone's home, he prayed that it was "Jasdevi's" extravagant house that he crashed through the walls of. That would teach those third-person fuzz-bags a lesson.

Pulling into the driveway of Allen's house, he ignored all of the usual quirks about the home that usually infatuated him: The way that the wispy trees on either side of the home blew white petals in the wind, the way that the sun's light was refracted from the glass-paned windows (the ones that the homosexual couple had spent all day in the local Home Depot deciding on), and the mere size of the damn home.

It truly was high time that Kanda made a move and dropped down to one knee, suggesting that Allen moved into his house with him. God knew the Sprout couldn't handle living on his own.

By the time he managed to fit the house-key that Allen had provided him with into the lock, anxiety was already holding him under its heavy current, shoving its head into its salty water until he squeezed his eyelids shut so tightly that neon stars dotted his otherwise black vision. He couldn't breathe.

Finally, the malevolent door slid open.

Without even taking the time to shut the front door to intruders or those damn twins (Kanda had a nagging suspicion that they were the kleptomaniacs who had stolen all of Allen's lawn gnomes last spring), Kanda scrambled up the small flight of stairs to Allen's room.

As he clambered upstairs, the back of his mind flipped open a notebook and noted all of the rarities that were occurring in Allen's home. First of all, the kitchen looked untouched for days save for the open capsule of pills on the counter. Secondly, the house smelled of chicken soup, sneezes, and cherry medicine—three things of which possessed Allen's absolute abhorrence. Lastly, and what was perhaps the most dire change, was the fact that Allen wasn't hopping down the stairs to greet him.

Allen _always_ flew into his arms when he arrived to see him, pressing his cheek against his chest and humming to the rhythm of his heartbeat. However, his boyfriend was nowhere in sight, and his bedroom door was closed.

Behind the green door, Kanda would either find a scene that belonged in the movie "Behind the Green Door", or a wilting, withering Beansprout.

Which was the lesser of two evils?

Kanda had no qualms over nearly tearing the bedroom door off of its hinges as he threw it open.

With his face buried into the pillow, a small puddle of drool accumulating on the fabric, covers wrapped tightly around his slight frame, interactive golem toy "Timcanpy" pressed tightly against his chest, and eyelids softly closed, Allen was either asleep or a victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Even from where Kanda stood, the fever in the Brtish boy's cheeks was apparent. Given, his cheeks were naturally rosy without the help of Neutrogena, but they were red enough to be sunburned. Either his lover had sliced off a piece of Kanda's car and placed it over his face, or he was sick as Hell. Dampened locks of white hair stuck to the boy's heated forehead.

Hell, the only reason why Kanda knew that Allen was alive and didn't need to whip out the Nebulizer was due to the heavy sounds of him struggling to breathe. Even without listening for it, the elder partner could hear the boy's pathetic wheezing.

Kanda's benumbed heart thawed for the slightest of seconds before returning to its Ice Age.

His slightly melted heart dominating his rational thought as well as imperturbable demeanor, Kanda walked on the tips of his feet to where the person he loved more than everything was deteriorating. His fingers hovered over Allen's clammy forehead, frightened that a mere touch would cause him to crumble into dust in his palms.

"Fucking stupid," He murmured in his second endeavor to suppress his concern, running his cool hand over Allen's eyelids. The boy's moist eyelashes tickled his fingertips, causing Kanda to revoke his hand instantaneously.

He had been _crying._

The Beansprout had been fucking crying, and Kanda couldn't even pummel the asshole that caused him to bawl into the dirt.

The twenty-two-year-old could just imagine it: Allen holding his sides in agony, hiccupping as relentless tears skidded down his blotchy cheeks. Finally, in his exhaustion, he'd collapsed onto his bed like one of the damsel-in-distresses from those Goddamn old movies he had forced Kanda to watch under the blankets with him on their fourth date.

Suddenly, Kanda wanted to do a drive-by on those damn twins.

Plan A: Use kind words and charm to wake up thy Beansprout.

Sitting down beside his sick lover, the man with the questionable gender rested his palm atop his lover's achromatic head. "Wake up and smell the Goddamn coffee, Sprout."

Gurgling in a fashion that caused Kanda's eyebrow to rise to alarming new heights, Allen rolled over, resting his head in his boyfriend's lap. If the Beansprout weren't so criminally adorable at that very moment, Kanda would have shoved his head into the toilet bowl and flushed.

Plan B: Resort to violence. Case closed.

Shaking his lover's head in a back-and-forth fashion, Kanda dipped his lips above the boy's ear.

"Wake the fuck up before I take advantage of you sleeping, stupid," He hissed, wondering if he would fulfill his threat regardless of whether Allen regained consciousness or not.

To Kanda's utmost disappointment, Allen's eyelids slid open.

"Yu?" The dazed Allen asked; his endearing British accent raspy and nasally like something akin to the time he had held his nose up while pretending to be his snobby high school culinary teacher, Howard Link. The teenager's throat was hoarse enough to put Deep Throat to shame and force him hide under his desk in preparation for the upcoming nuclear explosion.

"Tch, who the hell else would waste their time seeing you?" Kanda snapped, lightly rapping a knuckle against Allen's forehead. Why did the little idiot still wear that dumb expression on his face even after Kanda had oh-so-graciously clarified?

"W-wait…" Allen began, blinking a few more times as the image of his miffed lover registered into his latent thought. "Why are you here, moron? Didn't Lena and Lavi tell you that I'm—?"

"Jesus Christ, you look worse than Goddamn puke," Kanda disclosed, salting Allen's already searing wounds. Nice. "Did someone give you some Mexican Valium, or some shit?"

Raising an eyebrow at the street name of the most common date rape drug, Allen decided that it would be best to let it slide.

"Thanks for your input, genius," The boy mumbled, his vision almost as hazy as the time he had driven two hours in suffocating fog to return Kanda's stupid college report to him before class began. Although he was reminded of his lover's gender every weekend, Friday, and alternate Wednesdays, it was getting increasingly difficult for Allen to distinguish Kanda from a woman. He was _so_ writing something akin to that on , when he got the strength.

Closing his eyes, Allen coughed lightly, attempting to lie his head down on a softer part of his partner's lap. Unfortunately, he forgot that Kanda Yu, the man who had the poll of "most likely to be a body-builder" created specifically for him in the high school yearbook, was entirely composed of ninety-eight percent _muscle_, one percent stupid, and one percent ice. Or maybe it was ninety-eight percent _stupid_ and one percent muscle. Well, whatever.

"Does my lap look like some fucking pillow to you, Beansprout?" Kanda snorted, though he made no attempt to shove his partner off.

"Shut up," Allen muttered, his speech interrupted by a bout of incessant coughing. Unceremoniously sitting up, the British teenager threatened to expectorate both his lungs and a spleen.

Concern etched into every crease that formed on his forehead as his brow furrowed, Kanda awkwardly placed a hand on his quasi-estranged significant other's quivering back. A familiar feeling of euphoria took a hair-drier to Kanda's frost-ridden heart, as his fingertips trailed over Allen's protruding vertebrae.

Chills of unadulterated bliss receding down his spine, Allen's closed his eyes lightly, allowing his body to succumb to the rare feeling of Kanda's touch. If it took being confined to his bed to earn his semi- mentally impaired boyfriend's undeniable affection, then perhaps Allen would have to consider the prospect of licking the spoon while baking in order to contract salmonella.

Pressing his lips against the conch of Allen's ear, Kanda's excessive hair tumbled onto his warm cheeks, tickling them.

Allen crossed his fingers and willed for God to plague him with Diabetes; he would take this new, sweet, compassionate Kanda over sugary junk food any day.

As quickly as it had arrived, the serenity of their Kodak moment was smashed into one million pieces by the iron gloves of Allen's coughs. Hacking into his hand, the British teenager felt tears collect at the reddened rims of his eyes as a mixture of bile and saliva slid down his throat.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Sprout," Kanda grunted, pushing Allen back down onto his pillow and off from his lap. Damnit. "Do you have the Goddamn swine flu or some other Mexican shit?"

"Wha—?"

"I knew you were fucking sleeping with that African professor!" The hermaphrodite hollered, his voice clambering up the decibel escalator without any regard for Allen's suffering eardrums. "Now you have his Goddamn AIDS or Ebola or whatever-the-hell-else that fuck-brain is an incubator for. Fuck!"

Glaring at his obstinate lover through half-lidded eyes, Allen snorted—only to result in his coughing once more. "You're such a—" a cough took a box cutter to Allen's sentence "—freaking prick, you know that? No, I don't have swine flu—and I _definitely_ don't have AIDS or Ebola, stupid!" He shook his head, sighing. "Only you would think that. Remind me why I'm dating you, again?"

"Tch, because the sex is great. Duh."

"True, true." A pause. "But why, oh _why_ must you be so experienced?"

"More experienced than that Afro-head professor, Sprout?"

"Not all African Americans have Afros, moron," He took a pit stop in his speech so he could cough. "Besides, Mr. Mikk isn't even an African American."

"Mr. _Mikk_?" Kanda's eyes widened, his fingers trembling with the unquenchable desire to kill. "As in a fucking _Mickey Finn?"_

Cocking his head to the side, Allen blinked to signify his utter confusion. This was shocking, for it was usually he who held the advantage of knowledge over Kanda's head. Stupid illness, messing with his thoughts.

"You've never damn heard of 'slipping a mickey'? Come on, Sprout, you're not that shitty with street smarts."

"Yu, don't mind me asking, but what the Hell are you blathering about?" Allen asked, rubbing his temples in an attempt to ease his rattling mind. He could feel a migraine coming with every second that Kanda insisted on using foreign street names for illegal drugs.

"You seem better already," Kanda snorted, tugging at the collar of Allen's pajamas, moist tongue gliding over his lips.

"You're _not_ getting your groove on while I have a fever of thirty-eight point eight degrees Celsius!"

Kanda cocked his head, racking his brain for the dust-ridden file that contained his memories of Earth Science—where the formula for translating degrees Celsius into Fahrenheit was stored if he wasn't asleep while learning it.

"One hundred and two degrees in Fahrenheit, stupid."

"Why deny me when you're _burning up_, ass-fuck?"

"One more vulgar comment or corny pick up line that I _know_ you stole from Lav," Allen rasped in-between heavy coughs, a hand automatically rubbing his sore throat. "And I'm going to stir-fry you in one of your stupid woks. Just try me."

And, with that, the boy threw the covers over his head, hiding himself from his lover's hardened gaze. Chances were that Kanda would not appreciate having his nationality charred by the flammable candlestick of Allen's wit.

"Well, fuck you, too," Kanda grunted, crossing his arms over his chest, as he stood up to vacate the quarantined premises. Although his mind was begging him to walk out the door, the collected man's conscience was straddled with the prospect of Allen's weak-as-Hell immune system running out of ammo, and being engulfed by whatever disease was trying to capture the fortress of his vital organs.

They were silent. Crickets chirped once more despite the fact that it was in the afternoon.

"Are you still here, Yu?" Allen asked, his voice soft and meek, like a child who had just clogged up the toilet and was preparing to blame it on the beloved family pup.

"Where the hell else would I be?" The 'instead of right here by your side' was implied, of course.

"A-are you leaving?"

The sound of Allen stumbling over words was enough to cause Kanda to grimace. He wouldn't be able to catch the boy whom he held closest to his heart before he tumbled over his own sentences. Watching Allen fall to his knees was Kanda's one weakness.

Pivoting on his heel with a flip of his extensive mane, Kanda covered the distance between him and the bed in a single stride. He stood over the cot, watching the outline of Allen's body beneath the blankets rise and fall as he raggedly breathed.

"I need you; don't go."

The nuclear bomb that Allen had planted in the Nagasaki of Kanda's heart exploded on impact.

"For what?" He snorted, placing his palm against where he believed Allen's hip to be. "Because you need more than fucking fertilizer to make you look good right now, Beansprout."

Even with an endless supply of love for Allen filling his veins, it had no effect on his obstinate tongue.

The British boy blinked a few times before the urge to faint subsided. "I need to go to sleep; I'm under the weather. The doctor confined me to my bed before he sent me on my merry way, moron."

Kanda would bet his sex life on the chance that it had been that dark-as-night _Mr. Mikk_ who took Allen to the doctor's office.

"What the fuck do you want from me, then? Fucking go to sleep," He paused, waiting for Allen to reply. The boy's gray eyes never flickered. Kanda sighed, running his palm over his face. "What? Do you want a fucking story? You're such a fucking baby."

Biting his tongue in an attempt to suppress a laugh, Allen managed a smile for the first time since he had been diagnosed with strep throat.

"Yes," He divulged, before shoving Kanda's hand off from his waist. "Oh, and until this illness stops taking sandpaper to my throat, you're not getting any, so lay off."

An army of heavily armed profanity rolling off his tongue, Kanda headed towards bookcase, wondering how many years he would spend in prison if he used the doorway and the door as a guillotine for the fucking Beansprout.

"How about instead of the story, I give you a fucking funny-as-Hell joke?" The man growled, whirling around so he could face the lump under the covers.

"Shoot," The plant under said covers muttered.

Racking his brain for the most vulgar joke he could concoct, Kanda spoke. "What did I say when I saw you floating at night?"

"Huh? Wait, what the—?"

"_Hands off, Mikk."_

It took a few seconds for the race-biased "joke" to register in Allen's mind, before he stuck his dry tongue out in utter distaste—worse than the cherry medicine the doctor had told to him to take to fight the strep.

"Coming from a descendent of the Kamikaze fighters," Allen muttered into the pillow, his words muffled. "Just tell me a _real_ story before I commit _seppuku_."

"At least fucking pronounce it right, dipshit," The martial artist muttered, wondering if those Japanese lessons he attempted to teach his lover had paid off in the least. Judging by how Allen was brutally molesting his native tongue, the answer was a clearly bolded NO on the papyrus of his conscience. "Oh, wait, I forgot; you're too fucking nasally and sick and shit to do shit."

"There were so many things wrong with what you just said," The sick teenager murmured, wiping a hand over his dampened forehead. "Just pull up a chair and sit beside the bed, okay? Is that too hard for you?"

"Want me to wear some fucking surgical mask like I'm in Mexico?" However, despite his harsh tongue and racist cracks, Kanda pulled one of Allen's beanie chairs beside the bed, and planted his rear end onto the plush. Cracking his knuckles, he searched the drawers of his hollow mind for a story that may have proved as entertaining to his withering Beansprout.

Maybe Kanda should have told him about the funny story of how, since he had left the front door open in his haste to see him, half of Allen's furniture was missing? Nah. Now, that was a story for the police to hear.

Poking his head out from under the covers, Allen adjusted himself on the pillow, waiting for the scribe-worthy story that Kanda would be sure to enlighten him with.

"Hmm, um… fuck. Look, I'm not good at this crap," Kanda claimed, running a palm over his face. "Um, uhh, once upon a time, there was a fucking annoying-as-Hell Beansprout."

Attempting to snort through his nose but resulting in a rather deranged noise, Allen rolled his eyes, sarcasm almost visibly oozing from his tone as he spoke. "I like where this story's heading. _Do_ tell more."

"The Beansprout was so annoying that the God of the village, Lord Yu Kanda, got many prayers from the villagers, asking him to smite this unworthy pesticide."

"How riveting. Are we at the climax, now?"

"Shut up and listen," Kanda snapped, pressing a hand against Allen's diaphragm and pushing back so he would stay down and be polite while he was telling the story. "Now, where was I? Oh, right. So, anyway, the God, Lord Kanda, decided not to punish the Beansprout since he hated the villagers so fucking much. Hey—don't even _dream _about going to sleep yet, Sprout. I'm still talking."

"Isn't that kind of contradicting; telling me not to dream about sleepi—?"

"How about a nice dosage of: _Shut the fuck up_? Anyway, the dumb-ass Beansprout ate all of the food. So, everyone was pissed as fuck. Only, this time when they prayed to the God, he replied by electrocuting the Beansprout with his lightning bolts." Kanda paused, preparing himself for the big finale. "The end."

His audience was stunned into speechlessness.

"Um," Allen began, calculating the most appropriate response to the classic tale that had just raped his ears. "What the Hell was that?"

"I'm no Goddamn Robert Frost, fucker," Kanda snorted, lightly kicking the side of Allen's bed, causing a small gasp to escape the miffed boy's lips.

"You don't hold a flickering candle to Victor Hugo, that's for sure," the sick boy mumbled, earning a light slap on the hip for chipping in his two cents.

"I hope phlegm gets caught in your phloem and you choke and die, Sprout," Kanda stated, crossing his disgustingly toned arms over his equally muscled chest. A pillow almost instantaneously collided with his semi-empty head.

Kanda remained unfazed as he produced the scissors attached to his car keys out from the back pocket of his jeans, and went straight for the jugular of the helpless pillow. It was a good thing that Allen had been anticipating this to happen if his boyfriend had come to visit him, so he had been resting on two pillows.

"Did I mention that that was my drool-covered pillow?" Allen smirked before coughing into his hands, knowingly stabbing his diminishing luck in the back and feeding the embers of Kanda's impatience with its corpse.

Abruptly rising from the soft beanie chair with the pillow in hand, the belligerent man glided like the freaking Grim Reaper from The Sims en route to smother his lover.

"Put that pillow over my face and promise I'll throw up all over you," Allen threatened, groaning the slightest bit as he felt a headache ensue. "Your stupid story gave me a headache," He bemoaned, placing his clammy palms over his eyelids.

"Good," Kanda sneered, tossing the pillow to the floor and stamping on it. "I hope it splits your brain in half."

"Well, aren't you a basket of roses?"

"Wake up and smell the coffee, Sprout—"

"—I _can't._ I'm all congested and whatnot, remember?"

"Well, fuck you."

"You're charming."

"Why the Hell am I even here, anyway?"

Ignoring the small ache from Kanda's words that clamped onto his heart and metaphorically tore apart his aorta; Allen shrugged, brushing it off as if it didn't mean anything to him that his criminally homosexual partner had put him in front of his other priorities. The times where Kanda would envelop Allen in his arms, his hand on his hips and his nose buried into his hair, seemed to have been washed away from the window of their memories by the thick presence of Febreze, or some other household cleaner that had it in for their relationship. Kanda rarely pecked Allen on the cheek before he went to work, nor did he make an effort to notice how, when they were driving in his beloved Mercedes-Benz, the white-haired-boy would always place his hand on the joystick, in hopes that his antisocial boyfriend's hand would clasp around his when he reached for said joystick.

Their love may have not been dead in the bed, but all of the affection that their love was once founded upon had long been extinct.

Damnit, maybe Allen should have really considered his professor's offer to elope to Portugal with him.

"I don't know why you're here," Allen finally scoffed, literally _feeling_ the melodrama of the situation hanging in the air like perfume in Macy's. He cringed. Why was his life become so much like those soap opera re-runs that Kanda was secretly a sap for? "Why don't you go back to work or something?"

"Whatever," The man with the excessive hair shrugged, starting for the green door. As his hand hovered over the doorknob, a meteoric, insignificant memory jammed itself into his mind, making its presence known before it dissipated.

He remembered painting the very door that he was going to walk out of. Naturally, way back when, the door wasn't an incubator for whatever Goddamn disease had his lover in a headlock, but it was still the same door.

Kanda remembered that he had wanted to paint the door pink or something, to _flaunt your sexual preference_, he recalled himself smugly disclosing to Allen, before he received a rather painful jab in between the ribs.

After a surplus of hours quarrelling in aisle seven of Home Depot, Kanda almost getting thrown out twice for a "potty mouth" as an omnipotent toddler had disclosed, and going through two packages of Trident gum, they had finally settled their differences and called for a détente by deciding on green paint. That night (and morning, technically), they pulled an "all-nighter" courtesy of a de trop of caffeine and on-demand horror movies and painted the door a rather vibrant woodsy color.

Exhausted from their vexing work, the duo hadn't even changed form their sloppy Sherwin-Williams-coated overalls before falling into one another's arms, and falling asleep on the floor; the sounds of brutal murders from the television screen lulling them to sleep.

Why the Hell hadn't Kanda asked if he could move in with him back then?

It was then, right hand poised over the glossy doorknob and head held erect, that Kanda knew what he had to do.

Finally, Kanda was hopping out from his cold front and into a warm one. Amen.

Abruptly turning around, the Japanese man all but launched himself onto the bed, juxtaposing himself to his sick partner.

"Move over, Beansprout," The older lover asserted, already shoving Allen to the side without his consent.

"Wait, wait—what are you doing? I'm highly contagio—"

The feel of strong arms wrapping around his small frame caused all of the words die in Allen's sore throat before they could even reach his lips.

"Yu?" The ill teenager asked incredulously, refusing to look at the embracer in fear that he would come face-to-face with a Terminator-esque Kanda bearing a machine gun, or an escaped homosexual convict. No way in fiery _Hell_ was _the_ Kanda Yu making physical contact with him other than slamming his hips against his. No way.

"Shut the Hell up and let me hug you."

"…Who are you and what have you done with my Yu?"

Ignoring Allen's question, Kanda felt inexplicable affection pelt its heavy mass against the windowpanes of his heart as he pressed his boyfriend's back into his chest. Although the British boy's jutting shoulder blades felt uncomfortable against his breastplate, Kanda blatantly refused let go of the boy he loved by pulling him even closer. Burying his nose into the boy's soft, white tresses, he allowed the familiar scent of strawberries shampoo to dominate his senses. He grunted, unfamiliar pleasure and adoration melting the icicles dangling from his heart.

The corners of Allen's lips began to arch into a small smile, as he relaxed in his lover's calm arms. His heavy eyelids slid shut, his light eyelashes caught in the dim light of the outside world through the closed shades.

Kanda smirked, putting his arm in an awkward position so he could proceed to run his fingertips over the contours of Allen's polished lips. A small smile crossed the boy's face, his eyes still closed.

"You're arm's going to fall asleep if you keep that up," Allen teased, his voice groggy with the thick presence of exhaustion settling into it.

"Tch, shut up."

Kanda's breath chafed the heated, sticky skin of the nape of Allen's neck. Tentatively, the sick teenager's hand clasped around his slightly estranged lover's, his thumb tracing patterns into the man's soft flesh.

Like an old high school buddy that one used to get jiggy with in the janitor's closet, and hadn't seen nor heard from in ages, the duo rekindled their deceased relationship over doing what they did best. Only, perhaps not as graphic.

"I love you," Allen whispered softly into the pillow, squeezing the work-molded hand of the person whom he loved more than anything and anyone in the entire world. Even more than—dare he say it?—watching Lavi prank call Cross pretending to be a prostitute. And that was some funny shit.

"The feeling's fucking mutual, dipshit," Kanda announced as if it wasn't the most blatantly obvious prospect to ever exist. He subconsciously pulled Allen's small body closer to his beating heart. "Of course I fucking love you, too."

A small moan escaping his lips, Allen snuggled deeper into Kanda's arms. The man who owned said arms couldn't even attempt to prevent his heartbeat from accelerating off the charts.

"Beansprout?" Kanda started, his breath tickling the hairs on the back of Allen's neck.

"Yeah?" The teenager asked through closed eyes.

"Why the fuck didn't you tell me you were sick in the first place?"

Kanda single-handedly took a mallet to the rare moment between them, murdering it with more accuracy than a suicidal swallowing an entire tub of Play-Doh.

Revolving in Kanda's grasp, Allen faced his lover.

"Oh, babe, don't you know? I'm _highly _communicable," He smiled, patting the man's cheek.

Allen beamed. Kanda blinked. The interactive Timcanpy made a cooing noise.

A pivotal vein in Kanda's neck burst.

"I swear to fucking God, I'll send you straight to _Purgatory_," Kanda growled, sitting up so abruptly that Allen slammed back against the pillow.

"I didn't want to get you sick, moron!" Allen admitted, throwing his arms up into the air in defeat. "Besides, the doctor said that I can only transmit my virus if I have mouth-to-mouth conta—"

"Shut up."

Leaning over the teenager he loved, Kanda softly pressed his lips against Allen's, closing his eyes as an onslaught of that familiar wave of passion drenched him in its wake.

Blinking in surprise, the white-haired boy didn't even have a split-second to retaliate before his bellicose lover placed one callous hand behind his back and the other under his knees, making him airborne as he lifted him off of the bed. The elder man twirled his significant homosexual counterpart as he deepened the kiss.

Dizziness overtaking him, Allen attempted to push himself out of Kanda's ridiculously strong arms. However, escaping the man's grip was like getting that wad of gum out of his hair in third grade—_impossible_, and ending in having to wear a cap to school for the next five months before his hair grew back.

But, Jesus, didn't the man get sick of going to the gym at 6:00 AM every day?

However, despite the fact that nausea was pouring itself into his stomach and evacuating the contents of said organ faster than screaming _fire_ in a movie theater, Allen couldn't deny the fact that his heart was beating rapidly against its cage—begging to be released so it could mesh into Kanda's and become one beating black hole heart-hybrid. Kanda's heart being the black hole, of course.

Finally pulling away from the osculation, his lips still craving Allen's, Kanda smirked while tapping his fingers against the small of his partner's back. "You can't spread AIDS through kissing, stupid."

Opening his mouth to verbalize a well-thought-out rebuttal or a declaration of eternal devotion, Allen proceeded to prominently throw up all over Kanda's shirt.

Mondays were always the worst days.

* * *

EPILOGUE: Kanda got sick as shit and Allen made a remarkable recovery. The homosexual pansy fed de gr8 luvr chicken noodle soup until he recovered. :D Jas and Devi were arrested for stealing Allen's lawn gnomes and furniture, oh noes! OH, AND MR. Kraft MIKK-ARONI-AND-CHEESE GOT ARRESTED FOR A MIXTURE OF PEDOPHILIA AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT. Aww, man! D:

Rushed endings FTW! :D Sorry, my half-two-times-removed hubby, Mr. Pup. Initially, I was planning to write more, but I'm really starting to feel sick again (typing up a crappy fic about being sick nonstop for three hours really takes a toll on the immune system, it seems!) and I am in desperate need to study/cannot miss the final make-ups, tomorrow. D: If it's any form of compensation, I'm also working on a short Poker Pair fic for you because I'm extremely dissatisfied with the way that this _crap_sterpiece turned out. Ah, whatever. It's the thought that counts, I guess? (Oh, and for the record, before you all virtually shove WebMD results in my face: I'm fourteen-years-old and I've had strep throat _thirteen times_ in my life, so I know what I'm talking about.)

So, um, HAPPY TWENTY DAYS LATE BIRTHDAY, MR. EPIC-PUP! I apologize once more for my tardiness. But, um, uhh... may the benevolent Blue Fairy come to you and make all of your dreams come true, because a dream is a wish your heart makes! :D


End file.
